Science fiction short story, starts with a man convincing his crew mates to kill one of the crew

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craighaas

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The short story is a series of vignettes following a man that the reader would normally despise. In each vignette the man commits a deplorable act which eventually is seen to make sense. In the first vignette he is on a space ship traveling from Mars (I think) which has an environmental problem necessitating that one of the crew either be killed or be willing to sacrifice himself. The man is the least popular member but is able to convince the crew through logic that another person should be killed instead. The story follows him until at the end after many years, he is the president of the Earth Alliance, or something like that, and the Earth discoveries that an extra-solar species has launched an attack on the solar system which will result in the destruction of most of humanity and its colonies. (One of those is a hollowed out asteroid filled with genetically altered humans with multiple arms. I think they are referred to as ant-people.) The man as president gets on television and tells everyone listening to get a weapon, go through their neighborhood, and kill as many people as possible in order to survive the coming catastrophe.
 
Wasn't there a TV series recently with the same basic premise? (At least the 'kill everyone' part).
 
PaulMmn said:
Wasn't there a TV series recently with the same basic premise? (At least the 'kill everyone' part).
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I'm not sure about the TV series, but in the story I'm looking for they didn't kill everyone, just one person in order to save the rest of the crew.
 
Hi,

The only four armed man I can think of in sci fi is Caliban from "Oh Master Caliban" by Phyllis Gotlieb. The story doesn't match except that the world five teenagers with weird gifts land on, is an island of Dr Moreau type world full of mutated creatures which Caliban must lead them through. I think there were some sequels. And Caliban himself is an unhappy, vengeance filled guy who hated his creator / scientist daddy.

Cheers, Greg.
 
No, it's not "Kill All Others" but I loved that Electric Dreams episode! I hope they do another season of that. It was great television.
 
It was great indeed. There's no reason why they shouldn't do another season, especially considering how almost universally awful the new Twilight Zone turned out to be..

The series wouldn't be The Purge, I suppose? Premise is a little vague..
 
Trollheart said:
It was great indeed. There's no reason why they shouldn't do another season, especially considering how almost universally awful the new Twilight Zone turned out to be..

The series wouldn't be The Purge, I suppose? Premise is a little vague..
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No, it's not The Purge. My original question was about a short story, not a TV series. Thanks, though!
 
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